Safe and Sustainable Drinking Water on Tap: A Journey Across Continents

2 billion people lack access to safe drinking water around the world, and 2 million people die every year due to waterborne disease. The global under-served population does not have the resources required to maintain a conventional water treatment plant, hindering their health, access to education, and ability to do income generating work. AguaClara Reach trains organizations to build water treatment plants that can be sustained by underdeveloped communities: they are built using locally-available materials by community labor, can be run day to day by a local operator, and are powered by gravity. With an ongoing innovation partnership with Cornell Engineering and close collaboration with implementation organizations in the field, AguaClara’s robust and adaptable technologies represent a viable solution for communities that make less than $2 a day, for disaster-stricken areas that lose water service during extended power outages, and for towns seeking to upgrade their infrastructure to more carbon-neutral solutions.

Maysoon Sharif is an alumnus (B.S. ’10, M.Eng. ’11) of the AguaClara program in Civil Engineering at Cornell University. Upon graduating, she co-founded AguaClara LLC to help spread the successes of the student-based research program beyond its birthplace in Honduras to India. After spending over 2 years in India working to pilot AguaClara’s novel stacked rapid sand filtration technology, she worked to convert AguaClara LLC to the nonprofit organization, AguaClara Reach, to help facilitate scaling of the positive impacts already experienced on the ground.

6:00pm reception; 6:30pm lecture, gratis. Members and guests are invited to dine at The Club with Ms. Sharif following the lecture. The cost is $45 per person, inclusive of tax, gratuity and one glass of wine with dinner. Dinner reservations are required 48 hours prior to the program. Same-day cancellations and no shows will be charged.